Only a Lad

Hey there, Johnny, you really don’t fool me

You get away with murder and you think it’s funny

You don’t give a damn if we live or if we die

Hey there, Johnny boy, I hope you fry!—Oingo Boingo (“Only a Lad”)

Today’s “Only a Lad” award goes to Kyle Rittenhouse, the poor misunderstood politically naïve waif from Illinois who went to Wisconsin armed and ready for action, and ended up murdering two people in self defense. The Daily Howler and its fake news bedfellows are all over this story. The poor guy just couldn’t help himself, apparently. What was he supposed to do in the midst of all these scary people demanding redress for injustice. It was just too much for him, and he had to open fire on somebody—apparently.

Drooling dumbass Tucker Carlson has this story covered. It seems that Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while he was leaning into a vehicle is self-defense as well. The video evidence that we can all see for ourselves, it seems, is simply wrong and should not be trusted. Instead we should believe the assertions supposedly made by officers at the scene that Blake got one of them in a headlock and was unaffected by a taser shot by two of them. Waving a knife wildly he headed straight for them and at the last possible moment, he stopped on a dime. Unfortunately, the dime was in Mr. Rococo’s pocket. No, that was Catherwood’s story to Sgt (that’s Lt.) Bradshaw. But this farrago doesn’t come off any better.

Self-defense has a lot to answer for. In Christopher Marlowe’s day a defendant had to demonstrate that he was both in imminent danger of losing his life and that he had no opportunity to escape the attack to claim self-defense. Today the only thing that matters is that a killer had a feeling he might be in some kind of danger. When an armed man stalks and kills an unarmed teenage boy in self-defense, or a police officer shoots a man in the back seven times in self defense, or an armed vigilante kills somebody and then attacks and kills a man trying to disarm him in self-defense, that concept has been stretched well past its breaking point. Was Lezmond Mitchell acting in self-defense when he killed a nine-year-old girl and her grandmother? I mean, how far are we going to take this thing?

As far as I can see Rusten Sheskey belongs in prison. I mean, I don’t believe in prison, but until we come up with a sane alternative, he belongs off the street where he can’t do any further harm, and in our present society, that’s prison. As for that vile Trump-loving racist vigilante piece of shit Kyle Rittenhouse—lethal injection’s too good for the likes of him. I hope he fries.

3 January 2020

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 3 January 12020 is Festival of Sleep Day. That’s the best I can do, anyway. It’s Tolkein’s birthday, as well as George Martin’s. The saint of the day is Gordius of Cappadocia, a centurion who lost his job when a change of administration bought Christians into disfavor. He spent some time out in the desert—in meditation I suppose—before returning to  disrupt a chariot race at the expense of those who had worked hard to train for it and who had an actual stake in the outcome. He was martyred early in the fourth century.

The war with Iran is progressing nicely with the assassination of a high Iranian military official as ordered by the American president. Next the dumbass branch of the Republican party, along with Fox News and the Daily Howler, will be calling to an end to the impeachment process on the ground that the Commander In Chief needs to keep a clear head during this time of crisis—never mind that he brought the crisis on entirely by his own idiocy. If he cared about the good of the nation he’d do us all a favor and resign, confessing his inadequacy for the job he so rashly undertook. But that’s not going to happen. Trump’s only interest in the United States is ensuring its destruction. I can’t help wondering why.

Sufficient Unto the Day Are the Horrors Thereof

W

ell, it looks like the Daily Howler screwed up again, mistakenly identifying an overgrown blog entry as a peer-reviewed scientific paper. And there appears to be confusion over the fate of the self-proclaimed caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who apparently has died once again. (I’ll believe it when I see his head on a pike in some suitably public venue, thank you very much.) And houses in Florida are disappearing into sinkholes for whatever unholy reason. Arab citizens of Israel murdered two police officers at the Temple Mount, Turkish authorities continued purging government workers, Liu Xiaobo was cremated in China, and two tourists were murdered at an Egyptian resort.

And these are merely the headlines. Allah knows what horrors I would find if I read the actual stories attached to them. When ignorance is bliss, as they say, ’tis folly to be wise. For the moment I believe I’ll cling to my ignorance with both hands, thank you very much. Maybe tomorrow will bring better headlines.

Clueless Clown Blames Others for his own Ignorance of English

S

ome clown writing for something called the Daily Caller (shouldn’t that be the Daily Howler?) is so ignorant of the English language that he thought the common expression for good meant for the better rather than forever. I know English is hard, but I’d have a lot more respect for the guy if he simply admitted that he’d screwed up, rather than attack the people who pointed out his idiotic mistake.

Let me just say this to this Peter Hasson guy—look, I don’t know how long you’ve been in this country, or where you’re getting your English-as-a-second-language instruction from, but you need to work harder at it, especially if you intend to continue writing in our language. Don’t blow your top when you make a dumbass mistake, but rather make an effort to learn from others who actually know how the language is spoken. And don’t attack people who point out your stupidity—it just makes you look like even more of an idiot that you did already.

Oh, yeah—you owe the person you attacked based on your own fucking error a heartfelt and abject apology. That’s just for your credibility, by the bye. Always assuming you give a shit how you look, of course.